


Possession Is Nine-Tenths Of The Law

by em2mb



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Lovers Undercover, Smut, The Farmhouse Doesn't Exist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-09 03:22:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6887842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/em2mb/pseuds/em2mb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>It’s not until Clint steps out of the shower that he realizes Natasha’s stolen the spare sweatpants from his locker.</em>
</p><p>Five times Natasha stole clothes from Clint (and one time he let her).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Possession Is Nine-Tenths Of The Law

**Author's Note:**

> This one's been bouncing around in my head for a while now, but then [this post](http://em2mb.tumblr.com/post/144504438608/arms-and-arrows-clintasha-your-favorite) popped up on my dash and I had to write it _right this moment._

_ One. _

Prague, 2006

The first time Natasha picks up one of Clint’s shirts and claims it for herself, it’s off the floor of the honeymoon suite at the Hotel Savoy. He chuckles as she tries - and fails - to button it over her large breasts. Probably not what S.H.I.E.L.D. had in mind when it sent them in as newlyweds.

Natasha must realize her efforts are futile because she looks up. Her look of consternation might be the cutest thing he’s ever seen. “What?” she demands when she realizes he’s laughing at  _ her. _

Clint shakes his head, motioning her towards the bed, where he’s still lying tangled in the sheets. “You’re beautiful, that’s all,” he says, hands sliding over her round bottom as she plants a knee on either side of his hips. She’s also not wearing any underwear. Clint groans.

“We’re supposed to be tailing the U.S. ambassador,” Natasha points out, in which case she really shouldn’t be wrapping her arms around his neck.

“It’s called _ establishing cover,” _ Clint counters, nosing the collar of his shirt aside so he can suckle her neck. He feels the weight of her wrists leave the back of his neck, but he stops her before she can slide the button-down off. “Leave it on,” he growls. “I like how it looks on you.”

*

_ Two. _

Washington, D.C., 2007

Clint goes down hard, hard enough to knock the wind out of him, hard enough he doesn’t spring right up. But there are certainly worse places to be than flat on his back in the S.H.I.E.L.D. training gym, Natasha smirking above him.

“You’re a menace,” he tells her when he’s caught his breath, hand skimming her hip. An invitation. She glares at him for making a pass at her in front of Coulson, but Clint’s pretty sure Natasha will follow him back to the showers anyway.

Coulson, who likes to pretend his two best agents aren’t fucking despite mounting evidence to the contrary, checks his watch. “I think that’s enough for today.”

Natasha offers Clint her hand. “Two minutes,” she mouths.

“Scram,” he tells the pair of junior agents occupying the locker room. One of them - motherfucking Grant Ward - looks willing to challenge Clint, but he’s not about to take on Natasha, who flings the door open with the hunger of a lioness who’s just cornered her prey.

In the shower, she orders him to his knees, digs her heel into his shoulder as he eats her out. He chases the little noises she’s making, licks her hard clit until she’s tearing at his hair and fucking his face. She isn’t quiet when she comes, and Clint presses kisses to her inner thigh as she rides out the aftershocks. He’s heard the whispers, the talk about how many men she’s killed between her legs, but Clint would happily die right here.

Natasha drags him up for a filthy kiss. 

“You like that?” Clint murmurs, rock hard and breathing heavily. “You like how you taste?” He slides into her. “Fuck, Tasha.”

He doesn’t last long, never lasts long when the foreplay starts when they’re still sparring. He comes with a groan and pulls out, fingers her until she’s shouting his name again.

“Not bad for a loser, Barton,” Natasha teases. He’s still trying to catch his breath, so he slaps her ass as she steps out of the shower. He hears her dressing. He finishes washing up.

It’s not until Clint steps out that he realizes she’s stolen the spare sweatpants from his locker. 

“Not a word, Ward,” Clint snarls when he’s forced to walk back to his room wearing only a towel.

*

_ Three. _

Odessa, 2009

Clint swears when he sees the smoldering wreckage, some 200 yards down at the bottom of a ravine. No way anyone could have survived, only Natasha’s not just anyone. “Coulson,” he radios, trying to keep the panic out of his voice, “I have visual on the car.”

“What sort of condition is it in?

“She drove it over a cliff,” Clint snaps. “What kind of condition do you think it’s in?”

Phil ignores Clint’s outburst. “And where is Agent Romanoff now?”

_ Probably dead,  _ Clint thinks, but his codename’s Hawkeye for a reason. There, in the bushes, he sees a spot of blue the same shade as the headscarf Natasha had been wearing. “Going in,” says Clint.

“Do not go in,” comes Phil’s clipped reply. “Agent Barton, I repeat,  _ do not go in.” _

Too late. He’s already fired his arrow with the grappling hook. Clint disconnects his comms piece as he rappels down the rock ledge. He doesn’t need Phil in his ear telling him to wait for backup.

Clint finds himself staring down the barrel of Natasha’s gun.

This, despite the fact Dr. Sassini is lying dead next to her and she appears to be bleeding out from a gunshot wound to the abdomen. “Jesus, Tasha,” Clint mutters, dropping to his knees beside her. It’s a sign of how bad she’s hurt that he’s able to wrest the Glock from her hand. Her skin feels like ice.

“I thought you were him,” Natasha murmurs.

“Who?” Clint prompts, unpinning the headscarf and tearing it into strips, which he secures around her midsection.

Her lashes flutter. “A Soviet ghost story.”

_ Not helpful, Tasha.  _ Clint taps twice behind his ear. “Going to need a medical evacuation.”

Now Phil’s starting to sound annoyed. “If you hadn’t disconnected your comms,” he grits, “maybe you’d have heard me request one.”

She’s trying to sit up. “I tried to cover - ”

“I know you did, baby,” Clint interrupts, forgetting he’s still on the line with his handler.  _ Oops. _ “Hey, stay with me, OK?”

Natasha nods, shivering. It’s automatic: Clint shrugs out of his sweatshirt and tucks it around her. Where the hell is S.H.I.E.L.D.?

*

_ Four. _

Belgrade, 2011

It’s fucking freezing.

_ Of course it’s fucking freezing,  _ Clint thinks.  _ It’s fucking January, and that Russian thief stole your coat. _

“Stole” might not be the right word. He supposes he  _ had  _ offered Natasha his tuxedo jacket. But grudgingly. Only after their Serbian contact, Miroslaw, had given him the side-eye. Like somehow it was Clint’s fucking fault she’d chosen a dress ill-suited for winter in Eastern Europe.

Well, never again, because all he can do is watch through his scope as she abandons his jacket on the back of a chair on her way out.

_ “Tasha,” _ he hisses. “It’s a rental.”

But she already knows that, of course. “Clear,” she radios once she’s out of the building. 

Clint sighs and takes the shot. A fireball engulfs the ballroom.

Another mass murderer dead. 

Another tuxedo S.H.I.E.L.D. will insist he pay for. 

“Could you be a little less careless with my stuff?” Clint asks, irritated, when he hears her behind him. “I’m telling Coulson to deduct it from  _ your _ paycheck.”

Natasha joins him at the window. “He’ll tell me to expense it,” she says, watching a paramedic zip the dead general into a body bag. “No one else was hurt?”

Clint’s eyes scan the chaotic street. He gets it, he truly gets it, why she doesn’t want any more red in her ledger. “Doesn’t look like it.” He wraps his arms around her, breath ghosting the nape of her neck. “You were careful, Tasha. You’re always careful.” 

She twists in his embrace. “Which is it, Barton? Because weren’t you just scolding - ”

He shoves his tongue in her mouth (and makes sure to rip her gown when he undresses her later).

*

_ Five. _

New York, 2014

“What the  _ fuck, _ Tasha,” says Clint, storming out of her bedroom shirtless  _ because he’s only been here a day and she’s already stolen all of his clothes.  _ He realizes a second too late they’re not alone in her apartment but apparently hosting Tony and Bruce for breakfast. Clint’s about to beat a hasty retreat, except he notices she’s got on the New York School for the Deaf t-shirt he thought had been lost at the Triskelion. Fuck, if she’s going to broadcast their relationship to the rest of the Avengers, so’s he. “You have an entire closet full of clothes! Why do you insist on taking mine?”

“Oh, dinner  _ and  _ a show,” says Tony. He tears off a hunk of blueberry muffin and pops it into his mouth. “Well, breakfast.”

“Tony,” Bruce mutters, averting his eyes from Clint’s pockmarked chest. Suddenly airing their dirty laundry in front of the rest of the team seems like a bad idea. A very bad idea. “We should - ”

Steve bursts through the door. “Did I hear - Clint.” He blinks, lowering his shield. “When did you - ”

“Yesterday,” says Clint, wondering why Natasha neglected to mention what must be an open-door policy at Stark Tower.

“So you two,” says Tony, waggling his finger back and forth between Clint and Natasha. “How long’s that been going on?”

_ Years, _ Clint thinks, not that he’s going to tell Tony that. 

Finally, Natasha says, “You told me I could.”

It’s right there on the tip of his tongue,  _ no I didn’t,  _ a decade’s worth of accusations and frustrations about the games she’s always playing, when Clint realizes she’s right.

*

_ Zero. _

Sarajevo, 2004

“Yeah, well,” says Clint, raking a hand through his hair, “I made a different call.” The water shuts off. “Coulson, I gotta go.” He clicks off the call and tosses the phone - a burner - on the bed. Clint raps lightly on the bathroom door. “Natalia?” No answer. “Natalia?”

_ She’s probably waiting to run you through with the towel bar. _ Clint eyes his bow, but if he’s going to get her to trust him, he can’t go in armed. He takes a deep breath. “I’m going to come in, OK?”

In the dingy bathroom, she doesn’t look like Natalia Romanova, the KGB assassin he’d been sent to stop. She looks like a 19-year-old kid, naked and dripping water all over the dingy tile. He grabs a towel and quickly wraps it around her because he figures other men have stared enough. “How are you feeling?”

“I was supposed to kill you.”

That should probably be Clint’s cue to get out, but instead he takes a step forward. “Do you still want to kill me?”

“No.”

Gently,  _ gently,  _ he begins to towel off her hair. “OK, well, where I come from, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

“You’re S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“You could be too, if you wanted.”

“And what if I don’t?”

“Then I guess you could stab an arrow through my heart while I sleep and go crawling back to the KGB.” He clears his throat and kicks his duffle bag. “Take whatever you want.”

She comes out five minutes later dressed in a ratty t-shirt and sweatpants that keep sliding down her hips. Clint’s already chosen the bed by the door, and for a second, she looks like she wants to crawl in next to him. “What  _ you  _ want,” he reminds her.

“What about what you want?”

“I want - ” Clint yawns “ - as much sleep as I can get before my handler barges through that door at 0800 hours to bitch me out. Good night, Natalia.”

He rolls over, hoping she’ll make this easy and pick the empty damn bed. 

Nope. She slides in behind him and immediately tangles her legs with his. “I want - ” he can’t see her, but he imagines she’s pursing her lips “ - for you to call me Natasha.”

“Get some sleep,” Clint says gruffly. It’s almost an afterthought. “Tasha.”

*

Natasha takes a deep breath before climbing the spiral stairs to the roof where she knows she’ll find Clint. “Thought you might want this,” she says, handing him a soft, grey hoodie they’ve been trading back and forth for years. At least, that’s what she thought was happening. Apparently he thought she was getting off on stealing his stuff. “It’s starting to get cold.”

“You didn’t come up here to talk about the weather, Tasha.”

“No.”

Clint makes room for her on the ledge. They sit there in silence for a few minutes, just looking out over the city. Natasha shivers. “Here,” he says, draping the sweatshirt around her shoulders. “You look better in it, anyway.”

Natasha rests her head on his shoulder. “It was a bit of a game,” she admits.

“I know.”

She bites her lip. “It was only a matter of time before the rest of the Avengers found out.”

“I know.”

“You  _ did  _ tell me to take whatever I wanted.”

“I know,” he says, and he kisses her. He rests his forehead against hers. “Is it OK if I move in with you?”

“I think Stark would give you your own apartment.”

“I know. I just thought - ” Clint pulls back. “Never mind.” He starts to stand.

Natasha presses down on his knee. “You can move in with me,” she tells him. “I just don’t know why you’d want to.”

“Same reason you keep stealing my clothes, I expect.” He slings an arm around her and kisses her temple. “Klepto.”

It’s not  _ I love you, _ but it’s close.


End file.
